Mutant Chronicles

Mutant Chronicles is a pen-and-paper role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world, originally published in 1993. It has spawned a franchise of card games, miniature wargames, computer video games, novels, comic books, and a movie based on the game world. A collectible miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games is due for release in June 2008.

Mutant Chronicles was developed by the Swedish company Target Games as a successor of their earlier Mutant RPG series. The rights to the game are now owned by Paradox Entertainment.

In 2006, the Swedish game company COG Games secured the license rights to publish a new edition of the role-playing game, for which there currently is no release date.

Story

The game takes place in a distant future, where the Earth is a long since plundered desert, and humanity has spread to the worlds of Venus, Mars, Mercury, Luna (the first settlement following the exodus from Earth), and the Asteroid Belt.

Over the centuries, the traditional nation-states of the world have merged into huge corporations, of which five are large enough to be called megacorporations: Bauhaus, styled after the culture of continental Europe, the American-influenced Capitol, the Japanese-themed Mishima, the British-inspired Imperial, and Cybertronic, all of whom use private military forces to fight for resources. Luna itself is considered to be neutral ground and is home to the massive city-state known as Luna City. The other major power of this universe is the Brotherhood, a fanatical religious organization formed to meet the threat of the Dark Legion, an ancient evil comprised of five "Dark Apostles" and their horde of hideous mutants.

The reign of the Dark Legion began as mankind set foot on Nero, a fictional 10th planet beyond the orbit of Pluto, where they discovered a citadel. As they entered, the Imperial Conquistadors – a group of interplanetary explorers – accidentally broke the First Seal Of Repulsion, a thin ring of salt spread around the citadel. Inside, a mysterious iron plate was found, and as it was touched, the Dark Legion was brought to our dimension, and along with it, the Dark Symmetry.

The Dark Symmetry prevents computers and other electronic devices from functioning reliably, if at all, and initially caused complete chaos, and then a forced adaptation of the technology used by mankind. The Dark Legion is capable of faster than light-travel, utilizing certain points in space, much like wormholes.

The Dark Legion is the enemy of all mankind and commands the most powerful armies of the solar system, including Legionnaires, resurrected corpses of fallen Megacorp heroes; Necromutants, hideously modified humanoids; Centurions, the lethal lieutenants of the Dark Legion; and Nepharites, fearsome, towering behemoths of unimaginable power.

Film

Mutant Chronicles is the basis for an independent film, The Mutant Chronicles, directed by Simon Hunter and starring Thomas Jane, John Malkovich, Devon Aoki, Ron Perlman, Luis Echegaray and others, which is scheduled to be released in 2008.

Loosely based on the RPG, the story is set 700 years into the future - the year 2707 to be precise, where nearly everything is powered by steam, and mankind has exhausted Earth’s natural resources. Four corporations have taken over the world in which they are constantly at war with one another, the Bauhaus, the Mishima, the Capitol and the Imperial Corporations.

Spin-offs

• Doomtrooper, a collectible card game where you command warriors, magic and resources against your opponent(s).
• Dark Eden, a second collectible card game designed by Bryan Winter based on the tribes remaining on planet Earth. Genesis, an expansion set, was never released.
• Warzone, a Miniature wargame much like Warhammer 40,000. A Warzone real-time strategy computer game was in the process of being made but never published.
• A Doom Troopers videogame was released for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis systems.
• A trilogy of three novels set in this universe were published by Penguin Books to boost the franchise and widen the perspective of the roleplayers.
• The Siege of the Citadel was a board game where players would fight their way through a citadel filled with monsters from the Dark Legion.
• Fury of the Clansmen and Blood Berets were two-player board games where players (or teams of players) could recreate battles between Imperial troops and the Dark Legion.
• Acclaim Comics published a set of 5 Golgotha comics in 1996. Issue #5 was a Source Book with minimal info about some of the characters from the comics. Each of the comics came packaged with one of 4 promotional cards for the Doomtrooper CCG.
• Fantasy Flight Games published a miniatures game set in the Mutant Chronicles universe and was released in August 2008.
• Dark Horse Comics is developing a comic book series based on the upcoming movie.
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References

See also

• KULT

External links

• COG Games - Creators of the new Mutant Chronicles role-playing game
• The Official Mutant Chronicles RPG Forum
• The Mutant Chronicles CMG page by FFG
• Mutant Chronicles the Movie - The website for the Mutant Chronicles movie
• Doomtrooper Official Website
• Doomtrooper Polish Fans Portal and forum